The number of networked humans will reach saturation by the middle of the next decade, while the number of networked devices will continue to increase dramatically for some timeto come. The Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) has set out a vision of the futurewhere 7 trillion wireless devices will be serving 7 billion people by 2017. The vast majority of wireless traffic will be between machines in remote locations. However, wirelesscommunication networks have been designed mainly with human users in mind. And whilescale and type of M2M applications are growing rapidly over today's cellular networks, they are still defined following mainly human's communication requirements. To meet therequirements of M2M applications, a new kind of network is needed to serve efficiently ahuge number of devices which may have rather modest communications needs.
EXALTED has set out to meet Challenge 1 of the EU FP7 work program: to provide
Pervasive and Trusted Network and Service Infrastructures for M2M communications.
The project will work towards meeting following main aims:
· To develop and provide a new architecture to support efficient and cost-effective wireless M2M communications.· To provide energy efficient wide area coverage for M2M applications such aswireless sensor networks.· To extend the scalability of the LTE infrastructure with the aim to extend the range of
applications to very cost sensitive "mobile narrowband" applications.
· To develop a cost, spectrum and energy efficient radio access technology for M2M
applications, adapted to coexist within a high capacity LTE network.
· To increase energy efficiency of devices, as they may need to be autonomous for
months or years. New sleep mode optimization and wake-up mechanisms will be developed within the LTE extensions.Achieving these aims, EXALTED will impact both the network and service infrastructure, and also the use and exploitation of LTE networks, thus boosting the European manufacturersand operators.